The darkroom days

In an effort to wish cooler temperatures here, I am going to the archives and posing a winter picture today. This comes from a long time back when I was in Watertown, New York. One winter day I was out driving and came upon this old pier at a lake that I am not even sure what its name is. Anyway, it was cold. The pier was icy. I remember slipping and nearly falling on its icy surface while setting up this image. I love the angle on the pier as well as the texture, contrasting nicely with the icy snow covered lake.

This brings back memories of the days of film. I shot this with my Pentax 6×7 on Kodak TMAX 100 film. Occasionally I long for those days. The smell of fixer in the darkroom. Watching the image appear in the tray. Those little things that really hooked me on photography. Everything is so different now, yet in some ways it is the same. The tools have changed, but the concepts remain. The computer has become my darkroom. Many of my students today have never shot with film. They only know digital. I sometimes think that they are missing so much by not having played in the darkroom. The darkroom teaches a person to slow down and think about what they are doing. Nothing was instantaneous like it is now. So different.

2 Comments

Glad someone else feels like I do. We are actually going to have a functional darkroom at school this year. It won’t be a requirement to use it, but it will be available for student use, if they want to. I think it will be a big hit, and I hope that the students learn something from it.